MOSCOW – Georgia accused Russia on Tuesday of sending two fighter jets into its airspace and dropping a missile near a village. Moscow denied involvement and suggested Georgian authorities might have staged the incident to gain an edge in their ongoing conflict with Russia.

Televised footage from an area about 40 miles west of Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, showed a deep and two-foot-wide hole in the ground that authorities said was caused by a missile dropped Monday evening that did not explode. They displayed metal pieces that looked like missile parts.

“This provocation was meant to cause panic, disrupt the peace in Georgia and ultimately change the country’s political course,” Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili said. “We will sustain this trial and trials a hundred times greater for the freedom and independence of this country.”

Since taking office three years ago, Saakashvili has sought to steer the former Soviet state on a pro-Western path and relations with Russia have deteriorated.

Georgia, with a population of 4.5 million, hopes to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as quickly as possible. It is a transit corridor for a pipeline opened two years ago that carries oil from the Caspian Sea to the Mediterranean.

The Georgian Foreign Ministry described the alleged attack as “an open act of aggression.” The Russian defense and foreign ministries denied Georgia’s allegations.

The Russian Foreign Ministry suggested that Georgia might have staged the incident to undermine planned talks concerning the role of Russian peacekeepers in the breakaway Georgian regions of South Ossetia and Abkhaz Republic.

Both separatist regions are under the de facto control of authorities claiming independence from Georgia and backed by Russian troops, which took up peacekeeping duties after Georgia was torn by civil wars in the 1990s.